Invisible Hour
by BabalooBlue
Summary: "We grow accustomed to the Dark - When light is put away..." (Emily Dickinson) - Snapshots taken in the cracks of 'Everybody Dies', S8.
1. Negative I

**Negative I **

_What medicines do not heal, the lance will; what the lance does not heal, fire will. - Hippocrates_

* * *

After the urgency and blur of the last couple of hours, stepping into the dark silence of his apartment is a relief.

He leaves off most of the lights.

It's quiet and dark.

He is familiar with every corner, every edge; he's bumped into most of them more than once over the years.

 _Important things first_.

He fills his backpack with some basics. His ID. His driving licence. A change of clothes. All the pain meds he can find. He'll need those when he comes down.

He doesn't need much. He doesn't want much.

Then he takes a shower to get rid of the grime and soot. His leg is crying out for a long soak. But he fears he'll fall asleep if he lingers. He can't afford to fall asleep in the tub or anywhere else right now.

There isn't time. He doesn't have to rush things, but he wants to be out of here before daylight. Needs to be out of here.

In the darkness, he knocks over a bottle on top of the piano. He doesn't need to see to know it was empty. It's too light.

And that's a good thing because alcohol and heroin don't mix. As in: _do not even think about messing around with this unless you really want to die_.

Does he? He remembers visions and hallucinations in the warehouse, arguments with himself about whether or not he wanted to or even deserved to die. He didn't. Doesn't. Not anymore. He doesn't want to think about whether he had wanted to going into the warehouse. He clearly hadn't wanted to making his way out.

He's cheated death twice already in the last few hours, he doesn't need to try again.

He lets his hand rest on the piano for a moment.

There isn't much time. But there is time for this.

 _There is always time for this._

One last time.

He sits down.

Everything is quiet. He doesn't need to check his watch to know it's well after 2 am. It's that quiet, lonely time after most people have gone to bed and before the early risers get up.

He knows this time intimately. Over the years, he's spent a lot of it right here, seated at his piano, trying to escape, trying to sleep, trying to outplay the pain.

There is no need to be quiet. The people in the apartment above his are away; their mail has been piling up for the last week or so. Maybe they have skipped town. He is a tax advisor. He has always thought he looked shifty; maybe he got involved with the wrong people. Or maybe they've just gone away on a cruise. They look like cruise people. If he hadn't been so distracted by Wilson's cancer, he would've found out already.

And Mrs Redmond across the hall will be asleep by now after taking her meds. A few months ago, she'd waited for him to come home and pounced on him just when he was about to close his own door. He doesn't like her but he wasn't about to slam the door into an old lady's face either. She'd asked him for advice about her insomnia, wanted to know if her doctor was doing the right thing by prescribing her sleeping pills.

"I'm afraid to take them."

"What are you afraid of," he'd asked her.

"That I won't wake up."

"Well, one day you won't, whether you take the pills or not. But until then they'll help you get some rest so that day won't come sooner than necessary."

She'd looked at him with her head cocked to one side, as if he were trying to con her into something.

"Go, take the damn pills!" He'd finally called before closing the door.

So there really is no need to be quiet. There is nobody around who would remember hearing the piano in the middle of the night.

Without thinking, he begins to play a Schubert sonata but stops after a few bars and tries something else. He gives up after several more attempts – everything sounds off tonight, nothing flows.

Finally, he just picks some random notes and watches them fade away.

Until one doesn't fade right away.

The last note lingers for a moment and then disappears. It leaves a hole in the darkness, its edges blurry and ill-defined. He tilts his head slightly. With his shifting focus, the hole begins to look less like a hole and more like a crack. A small crack with irregular edges.

It floats above the piano, still in his line of sight but just out of reach. The darkness that's darker than the darkness around him doesn't move unless he moves. Whenever he changes focus, the edges seem to take on a slight shimmer.

It takes him a moment to realise he is _seeing_ music.

He smiles.

He hadn't expected to hallucinate holes in the darkness. If this is down to the heroin then it's the first positive effect he's felt, aside from the initial blissful abandonment of responsibilities and worries. Before he passed out. Before he felt like crap. Before he couldn't remember anymore whether he wanted to live or die. Before he started hallucinating dead people. Before he decided on a whim that dying was a good idea after all.

Just to see what will happen, he adds a few more notes to the darkness. They start moving around and bouncing off each other in slow motion. Some notes linger and join the rest. Others disappear.

After a little while, his hands seem to instinctively pick notes that stay, ones that seem willing to join the others.

Somehow he's managed to slip through the cracks of his life and land – where? Back at the piano, alone in the darkness. If it weren't for the dark holes, darker than the darkness, it would be just like any other night.

But as of now, he doesn't exist anymore. He has ceased to be.

He hits one more note, one that flies up into the darkness to join the others but bounces right off them. He watches it float up towards the ceiling and finally merge with the darkness surrounding it.

The other notes fade slowly.

The world outside the window isn't quite as dark anymore as before.

Time to go.

He picks up his backpack and takes one last look around.

Leaving all this behind isn't a problem. He has done this so many times growing up that it hardly seems to matter anymore. _We're leaving in two weeks, pack your things._ He'd always ended up leaving something behind, spent weeks wondering who would find his book on beetles, who would throw his old baseball around the yard. Was there another boy living in the house? Or was it a girl who had no use for his beetle jar or his baseball?

This is no different.

Yes, he would like to take a few more things – a guitar or two. John Henry's trumpet. A few books he's had for years. A couple of records.

But what's the point?

He doesn't know where he'll end up. He has a plan. A plan that doesn't involve an apartment or any kind of permanent base. He can't be lugging things around. If it goes as he hopes, he'll have to worry about something other than things. Something bigger than mere ballast.

Standing at the door, he turns back once more.

Soon, people will be through here.

His mother will be through here.

Wilson will be through here – probably for some really sentimental reason.

It doesn't matter.

He just hopes Wilson will do the right thing even if he can't know what it is.

He quietly closes his door behind himself, pulls his backpack up on his shoulder and steps out into the night that's beginning to change into a new day.


	2. Negative II

**Negative II **

_It was a night like all the others. Empty_

 _of everything save memory. He thought_

 _he'd got to the other side of things._

\- Raymond Carver, 'Listening'

* * *

After all the talking of the last 24 hours, stepping into the silence of House's apartment is a relief.

He lets himself in with his key. He doesn't have to see to select it from his keyring; his fingers can pick it out day or night, no light required. It's right between his own apartment key and the one to his office.

He wonders if this will be the last time he will ever use it.

Of course it won't.

Blythe will want to come here. That's what he spent the last few hours on – talking her out of coming straight here, sleeping here.

He finally talked her into letting him book a hotel for her.

She can't stay here.

Even he doesn't know what he'll find inside.

He hasn't told Blythe that he is ill. With a bit of luck, he won't have to. She will be too wrapped up in grief and in the details of her son's death.

House's death.

The door closes behind him.

He's spent the day separated from everyone else by a thin veil. It's a veil of compassion, care, worry and, mostly, talk – constant talk. Foreman, Adams, Nolan, Park, Chase. They're all talking to make him forget that his world was blown up last night.

The veil finally falls away.

The apartment is silent. So beautifully silent.

It smells empty even though it's full of things. House's things.

Books. Records. Music.

The piano.

There's a fine layer of dust on everything.

Everywhere except the piano.

He stands in the middle of the room, doesn't know what to do. Where to start. All around him is silence.

He doesn't want to turn on the lights. He's waited until dusk to come. Partly, because it took him a while to gather enough courage. And partly because he didn't want to meet anyone on the way who he might have to talk to. He can't talk now. He's done enough talking. He's all talked out.

Besides, what would he say?

There will be more talk once Blythe gets here. There will be arrangements to make. More talking.

At least he won't have to worry about cleaning the fridge. There's never anything in it that could go off.

He laughs out loud at the thought.

And then he can't stop.

He's doubled over with laughter and holds himself up on the piano.

Until the laughter turns into tears.

And then he can't stop.

He sits on the floor of an apartment full of House's absence.

But when he looks up he sees House sitting at the piano, just like he's seen him sit there and play a thousand times over the years.

He's playing now. But there is no music. The apartment is silent.

He finally drags himself up and into the bedroom. He's come here for a reason. He owes it to House to make sure his mother doesn't find anything embarrassing.

Like what?

Like porn. Like drugs.

He knows House has both in here. He doesn't want Blythe to find either.

To be truthful, he just doesn't want to have to answer her questions if she did. More talk.

He's all talked out.

No pills in the bedroom. But there are open drawers. Typical House; he is so careless and lazy.

Was.

Was.

He closes the drawers and resists running his hands over all those wild t-shirts nobody's ever going to wear again.

But maybe Blythe will donate the clothes to charity.

Someone there will have to wash and iron them. That'll be the first time ever those clothes see an iron, he thinks as he heads back to the living room, laughing despite the lump in his throat that's been getting bigger and bigger since he arrived.

Bathroom. There will be pills stashed away there.

But all he finds is some Tylenol. Nothing else. It's as if this place was cleaned out of meds.

House hasn't asked him for a script in some time, he now remembers.

He could figure out why, he's sure there's a reason for it. One that makes sense. But he can't think of it, and he's as tired of thinking as he is of talking.

He finally ends up on the piano bench.

There's so much to do. So much to think of.

He's so tired.

And alone. So fucking alone.

He shouldn't have to do this by himself.

He's sick and he's tired, and he's got five months to live. There should be someone here to help him.

Someone.

Someone should have thought of this before taking the easy way out.

Instead he's been left sitting here on his own, alone with this.

With everything.

As fucking usual.

He sees an empty bottle on the piano, grabs it and throws it, as hard as he can, to shatter against a bookshelf. The silence fractures into a thousand pieces on impact. There are shards everywhere.

The lump in his throat finally dissolves into tears and anger.

And a sob rips through the silence.

Who will clean this up?

He doesn't care.

There will be cleaners. Movers.

People.

In fact, he will make arrangements for cleaners and storage in the morning.

He'll be damned if Blythe gets the piano. Not this. She'll end up selling it. She won't know what else to do with it.

But what would _he_ do with it? He doesn't even know what he will do with himself now.

He can't bear the idea of someone else's hands where House's have been only a short while ago. Days? Hours? He doesn't know when House was here last. He had a case. Did he come home to change maybe?

He'll have to look into piano storage; he's sure there are special conditions that need to be met. Temperature. Humidity.

House would know.

House.

He can still see the flames and smell the smoke. The smoke has been like a curtain between himself and the rest of the world; it makes everything look hazy and sound off. All the talking. All those well-meaning hands on his shoulder.

Even here he can still smell the smoke, see House disappearing behind a wall of flames and falling debris. He wonders if he will forever carry the sight and smell of last night with him.

For the rest of his life.

Five months.

Desperate for a distraction, his eyes fall on the couch; that old, comfortable couch which carries the impressions of both their backsides from so many TV marathons. Trash talking. Drinking. Comfortable silences.

He drags himself away from the piano, carefully steps around the glass that's all over the floor and stretches out on the couch, fitting his hip into his own impression and his shoulder into House's, just as he's done so many times before. He wishes he could just go to sleep here one final time.

But there is no time. There is so much to do.

He still doesn't know why he really came here. Making things easier for Blythe is a lame excuse, and House would laugh if he knew.

He came here to escape and to… and to what? To see if he can find House here? One last place that hasn't been touched, hasn't been dissected? Now he can really hear House laughing.

Yes. All of this and more.

But all he's found is House's absence in an already dark and silent place - spaces where he used to be, things he used to do. Like black holes in the darkness.

There is nothing left here.

He picks himself up from the couch.

At the door, he stops to take one last look around. He will come back but it won't be the same. It never will be again.

He quietly closes the door behind himself and goes out to his car. He has been here a while. The night is already changing into a new day.


End file.
